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In Korea, where I am studying at the moment every suit is black. Blue is not available except for custom made. Every RTW is black or black pinstriped.
I would also like to add that I had no idea there were so many rules involved with dressing up...
"Light black" is charcoal, Lakewolf.
Neither did I. Frankly, I consider a lot of the associations people cook up for fabrics and suit styles to be counterfactual.
I don't think there's any question that black suits were once considered inappropriate, do you?
Black was a formal color, for formal events. When I went to pick out my first suit on my own, my mom's warning to me was "no black." So it's not something invented by the message boards.
The question, in my mind, is whether that rule, devised in a time that embraced such rules to sort people into social categories, should still have bearing on us today, or on those from places that lacked the taboo. Black certainly has been worn before in the day in the West, and it's only if we get locked into the mindset of a certain period that we must accept its prohibition. When do we decide that we've moved on and that black is once again OK? I'm not sure, but I know that are still folks, even those without online avatars, who still consider them questionable.
I checked out Holdfast's black suit for sale... Why wouldn't something like that work for a night out or a wedding? I think it looks real sharp and festive with a tie like that...
FNB, I would say you are projecting, and if you are not trolling, you are certainly stirring the pot.
There's a lot of thought and history that has gone into men's clothes. The OP asked for it, we've given it to him, and now he can do as he pleases. There is no Yankees/Red Sox thing here, no matter how hard you cheer for it to appear.
The internet message boards focus a lot on black suits because they are wildly popular today. Ten years from now, when everyone is wearing blue or brown suits, people may be debating "what is wrong with a blue suit?" Well, a blue suit, to some, looks too bankerish or politician like. There was a time when every member of Congress and the Senate wore mainly blue suits. And a brown suit, to others, looks like ****. There was a time when the brown suit was widely scorned by men of taste and fashion.
The point of loving and hating on particular items is to build and practice a set of sartorial principles that work for you.
And Lakewolf, I still think your suit is charcoal. If it's not 100%, and there are lots of suits that are solid, 100% black, then I would call it charcoal, which might not be described best as a specific % but as the upper range. So I'd say I see lighter charcoals and darker charcoals. It's gray as it approaches black. And as for the meaning of "charcoal," open up a bag of Kingsford and there it is. I admit it's a tedious debate, but I've worn very dark gray suits among men in black and you can see the difference. (I have also worn black suits and would not be ashamed to do so, in the right circumstances, if my charcoal suits were not available.) Just as you can see the difference between your dark, dark gray ("light black" you call it) and the more usual dark gray. I do think that when the "black suit" came into vogue in the 1990s, there were a bunch of dark gray suits in the mens' stores that were not black enough for men who wanted to look like Grace Jones, one of the Blues Brothers, or some other glamorous person famed for sporting black.